Janome 2030 QDC

This isn’t exactly the intended use of this space, but a bunch of people have been asking me for sewing machine reviews and tips, so here it goes:

For about 15 years, I sewed very happily with a very basic entry-level Kenmore machine. It had straight and zig zag stitches and a three-step buttonhole, and a couple of stretch stitches for knits. It was absolutely all I needed for a long time, and this review should be construed in no way as to say that anyone needs a fancier machine for the vast majority of sewing. If you’ve got a machine that does the above, you’ll be able to sew household goods, costumes, clothes, accessories etc. very well. I’d actually say that if you’re new to sewing, spend as little as you can on a basic machine from a good brand (even used, assuming you can try it out before you bring it home); upgrade when you know what it is you like to sew and what kinds of additional features and functions you would most like. There’s no point in spending a couple of hundred extra dollars on decorative stitches you’ll never use–or automatic buttonholes when you don’t like sewing clothes–or a quilt extension table if you discover you hate quilting.

And I’d likely not have replaced my Kenmore if it hadn’t been breaking down on me. After fifteen years of dedicated service I suppose it was destined to happen: if I selected the straight stitch, sometimes I’d get zigzag; if I selected the buttonhole stitch, sometimes I’d get a straight stitch. I’d end up faking a buttonhole with a very densely set zig zag stitch, overlapped a couple of times. The bobbin thread was forever getting tangled. It was loud. Also, Kenmores are decent machines, but they’re from Sears, and it’s not so easy getting support on sewing machines these days from Sears (my local store doesn’t carry sewing machines or supplies) which can make it difficult to get extra bobbins or accessories or different feet or, you know, repairs when the machine starts breaking down. I didn’t want to deal with that hassle, so I struck when the boxing day iron was hot and got myself a Janome half-price. (Looking at the Kenmore page, it wasn’t actually much more expensive than a similar Kenmore model–so there you go.)

Janomes are reputed to be the world’s most reliable sewing machines; Berninas are good too, if you have the money; Singers are inexpensive, but not as good as they used to be. Basically, Janomes are like Hondas: a really nice little machine at a reasonable price. Two things settled the choice for me: the recommendation of my local fabric store and sewing studio, which is completely stocked with Janomes for their sewing classes; and a recent bit in a sewing magazine, asking the issue contributors what machine they have at home and use most often. One person said Bernina. Every other contributor said they use a Janome.

If they’re anything like me, of course, they have more than one sewing machine at home: I have five right now, embarassingly, including my daughter’s, my old broken Kenmore, an antique Singer that I’ve been told works but which I bought for the sewing table it’s embedded in, the new Janome, and a used BabyLock serger that I also adore. I thought it quite significant that for almost all of the contributors, the one they used most often was their Janome.

The 2030 QDC was on sale, as I said; it also had a few features I was looking for:

a) automatic one-step buttonholes.
b) quilting accessories and a little extension table for quilts
c) lots of lovely additional feet, including a quarter-inch seem foot, a walking foot, a darning foot, a buttonhole foot, a zipper foot, a see-through foot for the decorative stitches–basically anything I could think I might want to use

That it’s computerized I didn’t really care about one way or the other. Indeed, the computerized part means it makes a bit of a hum when it’s on whether it’s in use or not, which may be annoying to you. At any rate, computerized models are not superior to mechanical models for most sewing.

I’ve now put it through four sewing projects–three patchwork/quilting projects and one piece of clothing–and I love it. It’s a great little machine.

First: patchwork pouch

Frances has now commandeered this for her personal use to corral part of her mountain of art supplies. The project came from 1-2-3 Quilt, a book of progressive learn-to-quilt projects. Threading the machine was completely intuitive, assisted by the autmoatic needle threader, and winding and installing the bobbin was really simple. The bobbin is installed horizontally beneath a transparent plastic plate, so you can see how much thread is remaining. You change feet with a button at the back of the foot holder–no screws!–which was fantastic, and the quarter-inch and zipper feet were super handy and very easy to use. The machine sews much more quietly than my old Kenmore. Janomes also can be operated with the use of a start/stop button on the machine itself rather than the foot pedal, and I played with that and found it pretty handy. I’m used to foot pedal operation, so I’m not sure it’s something I’m going to use often, but for someone shorter who has a hard time reaching a foot pedal or who hasn’t spent fifteen years sewing with one, I think it could be really great.

It also has a button to control whether the machine stops with the needle raised or lowered. Most of the time I use it with the needle raised, but lowered is great when you’re fidgeting with curves or corners and need to pivot frequently.

Second: table runner

There is only one reason I would sew a table runner. Well, ok, two. I might sew one for a gift, for someone else. But there is only one reason I would sew one for me, and that is as a learning project. It was my second project in the 1-2-3 Quilt book, so I made one out of leftover fabric, and god knows between craft supplies, sewing projects and homework, the dining room table will never be clear enough for it to be used. But it’s done. The quilting extension table came in very handy. It was great to have the project at the level of the machine; kept everything moving through in a nice straight line. I also used a walking foot for the first time ever, and once I got the hang of it, it worked great and made for nice quilting lines with no fabric puckering or pulling.

Third: patchwork tote bag

I know the handles don’t match the fabric, but it seemed silly to go out and purchase new cotton webbing for another practice project. Still, it’s cute, eh? And very sturdy. It carries a lot of books. I think I’ll keep this one at my new office for any midday errands I need to run. It didn’t really show me anything new about the Janome, though.

Fourth: the Fancy Shirt

aka, Vogue Pattern 1366 , an Anne Klein pattern I got on sale for $3, rated “average” for difficulty. I bought a really nice super-soft bright pink Italian cotton for it on Queen West a month or so back, and I was not looking forward to attempting a buttonhole in this gorgeous fabric with my wonky old Kenmore and it’s fickle buttonhole settings–and this shirt has a lot of buttons. You can’t see them in the picture, but take my word for it. Isn’t it pretty? Look at those cool sleeves!

(I made the pants in a test fabric a while back, and will make them again in a nice light wool, too. It’s a great pattern set if you’re looking for some nice work wear and don’t mind spending a bit of extra time fidgeting with the details. I will also say that unlike many brands, Vogue patterns are correctly sized for the body measurements included on the pattern envelope, so do not undersize yourself. I sewed up a size 16 and it’s just about perfect for me, pants and shirt both.)

This was where I really fell in love with my beautiful little Janome.

Automatic buttonholes! You put the button you want to use in the buttonhole foot, and it automatically sews the buttonhole exactly the right size with the push of a button! Once I got it all figured out (and I do recommend practicing on some scrap fabric pieces first), I put the placket underneath the foot, pushed the button, and got up and went to the kitchen to fetch my tea. And I came back and there was a perfect little buttonhole waiting for me. Just thinking about it I could go downstairs and give it a hug and a kiss right now. Apparently you can also use the machine to sew on buttons (buttons!), but I haven’t yet been brave enough to try that.

Overlock stitch! You know when a pattern tells you to sew once, sew again 1/4″ away, and then trim close to the second stitch line (if you don’t, it’s for seams with heavy use to reinforce them)–instead I stitched once, trimmed, and then overlock stitched 1/4″ away to get a serged effect without having to get out my serger. The seams inside this shirt are a thing of beauty, I tell you. They will last for 20 years.

No tangled bobbin threads; no skipped stitches. All of the accessories are stored in a little flip-down compartment at the front of the machine, so they were all to hand when I needed them.

Now, a lot of this is not unique to Janome, and I could have gotten automatic buttonhole features etc. with any number of different brands. But it’s smooth, quiet, makes lovely stitches, is a pleasure to use and designed to be as easy as possible–with things like the viewable bobbin and the button for changing feet, for example. One of the stitch settings automatically reverses at the beginning of a new seam to “lock” it; I haven’t used this yet, but again, I can see how this would be very handy for new sewists. I could have found something much fancier for a lot more money, but I frankly can’t see why.

I won’t say the new machine makes me like sewing even more (though I’m tempted to), but I will say that it has eliminated some not insignificant frustrations from my old machine, and I can’t wait to start on my next project (that’ll be the fifth since buying the machine last Friday). Pants or throw quilt? Throw quilt or pants? I suspect I will be lost in a fabric haze during all my spare time for at least a few months to come.

It’s my untested belief that expertise in any technical field will result in a near-total loss of respect for journalism.

I know it did for me. The more I learned about climate change, the biodiversity crisis, environmental regulations, and renewable energy, the more I realized that newspaper articles reflected reality only by chance, in passing. More often, an ill-equipped person with good writing skills and no critical thinking ability would write a piece far outside of their education and background by interviewing a bunch of people who claimed to be experts, without evaluating their credentials. We get climate change pieces giving equal weight to well-respected international climate experts and oil-funded PR hacks, pieces on renewable energy with well-reasoned arguments by scientists quoting the best available information and fruit-loop arguments by naturopaths who wouldn’t recognize a herz if it came up and hit them on the head.

And you end up with a voting public almost completely muddled on key issues because they’ve come to the completely totally 100% incontrovertibly WRONG conclusion that there are two sides.

Of course people are entitled to their opinions. I am legally well within my rights to believe that Mars is peopled by winged skeletons who worship Lily Allen. But the legal right to hold an opinion is not the same, and can’t be the same, as the attitude that reality is then required to bend to accommodate that opinion. No matter what I believe, Mars is in fact NOT peopled by winged skeletons who worship Lily Allen, or by anything at all. The experts are right and I am just plain wrong. (Or I would be, if I held that opinion.)

This set of science experiments sheds some light on the psychology of our inherent tendency to give equal weight to two contrary opinions, even when one comes from an expert and the other does not. Fortunately, for those of you who have no intention of purchasing the article for the low-low price of $10, you can also read this fun summation in the Washington Post.

This went on for 256 intervals, so the two individuals got to know each other quite well — and to know one another’s accuracy and skill quite well. Thus, if one member of the group was better than the other, both would pretty clearly notice. And a rational decision, you might think, would be for the less accurate group member to begin to favor the views of the more accurate one — and for the accurate one to favor his or her own assessments.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, report the study authors, “the worse members of each dyad underweighted their partner’s opinion (i.e., assigned less weight to their partner’s opinion than recommended by the optimal model), whereas the better members of each dyad overweighted their partner’s opinion.” Or to put it more bluntly, individuals tended to act “as if they were as good or as bad as their partner” — even when they quite obviously weren’t.

The researchers tried several variations on the experiment, and this “equality bias” didn’t go away. In one case, a “running score” reminded both members of the pair who was faring better (and who worse) at identifying the target — just in case it wasn’t obvious enough already. In another case, the task became much more difficult for one group member than the other, leading to a bigger gap in scores — accentuating differences in performance. And finally, in a third variant, actual money was offered for getting it right.

None of this did away with the “equality bias.”

The research psychologists attribute this to our need to belong to groups and get along with people. It seems that need outweighs any practical consideration, a good deal of the time, including when money is on the line. Fascinating, right? People who are right and know they’re right defer to people they know are wrong in order to get along and maintain group dynamics, even when it costs them to do so.

When it comes to climate change, this is a serious problem.

Aside: Climate change is a real thing that is really happening and is a complete and total catastrophe. There is no debate on this point in any credible scientific circle. If you think that there is, I’m so sorry, but you’ve been had.

/aside

We end up not moving forward with policy solutions because we keep acting like the actual experts and the paid non-expert hacks share some kind of equivalence when they patently don’t.

But–and I’m sure I’m not the only person thinking this–it’s present in every community, including the SBC.

Ah! See? I told you I’d come around to it.

People act as if the opinions and contributions of experts and amateurs are equivalent when they are not.

Thankfully, the fates of human civilization and a minimum of 30% of animal and plant species do not rest on this fact. The worst that happens in most cases is that a person walks around for a good long time in a garment that looks like utter shit and feels really fabulous about it. On a scale of worldwide catastrophe, it doesn’t even rank.

On the other hand, as this science makes pretty clear, an entire generation of sewers are being educated largely by internet celebrities who are too incompetent even to understand how incompetent they are. It’s not a catastrophe, no, but it is a crying shame. And as predicted by the social psychologists, if anyone ever speaks up to point out that some of them are experts and other are, well … not …, they are pilloried as Mean Girls, jelluz haterz, and bullies.

Aside 2: Yep, I count myself in the group of people sometimes wandering happily about in a garment that on later reflection was not up to snuff. It happens. We’re all human. I won’t melt if someone points it out, though tact is always preferred. It doesn’t count as “bravery” to “put yourself out there” if you feel entitled to nothing but praise; and if you’re going to present your work in public you need to be prepared for public criticism.

/aside

So it’s not the end of the world, no, but it’s a detriment to all of us. The people getting the money, in many cases, haven’t earned it; the people with valuable skills to share don’t have the platform to do so; we keep acting as if everyone’s equal when they’re not to be Nice and keep everyone happy, even though not everyone is happy; there are entire boiling lava rivers of resentment and bitterness flowing right under all the green meadows we’re so happily skipping over (in our badly-pressed culottes and boxy tops with peter pan collars, no less). It’s weird. Can’t we, as an online culture, agree that it’s not a violation of the Geneva Convention if someone points out that a hem is crooked or a print isn’t matched? Does it matter if it’s not “nice”? Don’t we all benefit from increased honesty and openness? Do any of us actually expect to be perfect, or need to be treated as if we are perfect in order to function day to day? If you really don’t want people to point out how you fucked up, is it so much to ask that you acknowledge it yourself, then? Hey look at this horrible side seam–I really fucked up!

That went off on a bit of a tangent. Pardon me. Let’s drag it back on track:

The Equality Bias! It makes everything worse while we smile and pretend nothing’s wrong. Fight it!

Naomi’s political lens is so focused that it’s blinding. This is less a book about climate change than it is about why climate change is now the perfect excuse to do everything she’s always wanted to do anyway (eg. scrap globalization, redistribute wealth), which is fine, but she ignores any contrary evidence. For example, she has a brief section on the brief flourishing and untimely death of Ontario’s green energy economy, which she blames 100% on the WTO’s decision on domestic content. The waffling and delays of government regulators on applications, the constant changes in direction, and the dead-set-contrarian politics of the mostly rural ridings where wind energy projects were to be sited were completely overlooked, but as anyone who actually went through the process can tell you, the domestic content reg change was the least of any developer’s worries, and came after years and years of frustrations brought about by the public sector.

She spends a great deal of time criticizing anyone else whose political perspectives change how they perceive climate science and solutions, but is much, much worse herself in this book. No information penetrates unless it conforms with her pre-existing beliefs. But the global carbon cycle is not sentient. It doesn’t care how carbon emissions are reduced; it doesn’t even care if they are reduced at all. It does not vote and has no political preferences. WE do; and so it’s up to us to make some decisions about if and how we’re going to turn things around. It should be a mark of deep shame to any thinking citizen in a democratic society that authoritarian China is pulling so far ahead in the transition to a renewable economy.

The flaws with This Changes Everything can be boiled down to two, major, fundamental issues:

1. She acts as if the private and public spheres were diametric and opposed, rather than almost entirely overlapping. A person who works all day in a corporation then goes home and becomes a voter and consumer. People move back and forth between the private and public sector in terms of employment all the time. We are not talking about two different species–the private, evil homo sapiens determined to ruin the earth at a profit and the loving, public homo sapiens trying desperately to save it. It’s all just people.

2. The public sphere is as complicit in this as the private sphere. The reason we do not have a healthy, thriving renewable energy sector in Ontario right now is because the people of Ontario didn’t want it. They had it, and then put the politicians of the province under so much pressure to gut it that eventually they did to save their mandate. The moratorium on offshore wind projects in Ontario is a perfect example: two (small) corporations were all set to do the assessment work necessary to figure out if their Lake Ontario projects would work or not, but the government made offshore projects in Ontario illegal because the voters in Scarborough demanded it.

This is a terrible book on climate change. You’d be better off reading almost anything else on the subject.